Winning at Time Management in Homeschool/Roadschool

 

Approaching home education with purpose and meaning is a challenge.  There are so many choices to be made: curriculum, time management, extra curricular activities, education methods, field trips, social activities and the list goes on and on….  One of the most important decisions that parents will make in their approach to homeschool/roadschool is how to govern their time.

Roadschool comes with its own unique set of predicaments.  Chief among those difficulties: keeping school moving in a forward progression with an irregular schedule.  When your home is constantly being torn down, relocated and set up again, how does anyone conduct a “normal” schedule?

Well, we’ve only been doing this roadschool thing for about 8 months.  But, I have come to the realization that keeping a roadschool schedule is not that different than the homeschool schedule we have employed for the last few years (with a few necessary tweaks).

Before I create a schedule for our family, my first item of business is to identify our priorities.  I do this by asking questions like:

• What activities are most important to our family life? (ex. family devotions, youth group or clubs, exercise, etc.)
• What areas are we weak and  need to grow in? (ex. needing to eat healthier means leaving time to prepare healthy meals)
• What areas have been neglected that we need to carve out time for? (ex. making sure the kids are bathing regularly- just keeping it real, peeps.)

Next, I consider family needs:

• Are there regular activities that we need to carve out time for? (example: naps for babies, laundry, or piano lessons)
• Are their shared items that require a rotating schedule for the kids? (example: do they share books, a computer or a piano for music lessons?)
• Do mom and dad have shared resources that will require adjustments in the schedule? (example: do mom and dad share a vehicle that will require dropping one parent off at work or only allow for activities on certain days?)

Then, I make a time grid, either on notebook paper or on a computer spreadsheet and begin filling in the priorities, followed by specific needs.  Here’s how my/our schedule shaped up for this year:

Kid’s Daily Schedule
7AM	wake up- get dressed, make bed, clean up bunk house
7:30AM	breakfast/family devotions
8AM	family work out (hike/bike/circuit train/etc.)
10AM	go to school destination (library/Chick-fil-a), eat a snack
10:30AM	all kids do MATH,
11:30AM	All kids work on Monarch assignments
12:30PM	LUNCH
1PM	Continue Monarch Assignments
3PM	Mom meeting (H-Mon, S- Tues, G- Wed., I- Fri)
4PM	Make corrections in Monarch & Teaching Textbooks, Complete Projects
5PM	Leisure Screen Time (IF schoolwork is done & room is clean)
6PM	Dinner
6:30PM	Clean up/dishes
7PM	Showers (H- Mon & Fri, S- Tues & Sat., G- Mon & Fri, I- Tues & Sat)
	& pack school bags for next day
8:30PM	Get dressed for bed & brush teeth
8:50PM	into bed
9PM	lights out Gideon and Izzy
9:30 PM	lights out Sarah
10PM	lights out Hannah

You may notice that I have allowed two and a half hours each school day for a family workout.  This was my way of addressing our need to excercise AND allowing time to explore varying destinations as we travel.  Yes, we still have time on the weekend to spend a day or two exploring as a family, but this gives us daily chunks of time to take a bike ride, go for a hike, etc. (If you would like to see a glimpse of our first year of roadschooling, click here to watch our video, “Dear Kids: an Open Letter About Our First Year of Full Time RVing”)

Some people will look at this and feel it is hyperscheduling the day.  I have actually made much more detailed schedules in the past (when you are teaching 4 different kids, in 4 different grades, in multiple subjects, it can get complicated FAST)!  But my kids have responded REALLY well to having structure.  They know what is expected of them and when it is expected.  A couple of them have even thanked me for making a schedule for them (and that’s a big deal coming from kids 14 and under)!

Whenever I create a new schedule, I try to hold us to it for a 2-3 weeks before we lax and deviate.  It takes a while for everyone to adapt to a new way of doing things, so it can take some time to discern if the schedule is working for us, or if we are working for the schedule.  Sometimes, I can tell right away that we need to make adjustments.  But once in a while, it takes time to recognize a bad day versus a problem with the schedule.

Whether we choose to homeschool year round or subscribe to a traditional calendar school year (we have done both), our family typically does school 4 days a week and uses one day as a “catch up” day.  Now that we are traveling full time, we are using that “catch-up” day as our travel day.  Ideally, we only travel one day a week, since it is time consuming to tear down, travel and set up again.  The kids will have to do homework on the weekend if they are unable to complete their assignments on the regular school days or our travel day.

I hope that my method for scheduling homeschool/roadschool can be helpful to your family! If it is, please like this post by clicking the “like” button below and sharing it with your friends.  If you have any questions or suggestions, I’d love to hear from you!  Please leave them in the comments below and I will answer them to the best of my ability.

Keep Doing Life Deliberately!

Trisha

 

 

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Making the Most of the Very Short Time

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as a reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. ~Colossians 3:23

Life is short.

So short.

Recently, a beloved brother in the Lord passed away. He was in his early 40’s and had a beautiful wife and three kids. He was the type of guy who did not withhold himself from anyone. He was outgoing, generous, and incredibly deliberate when it came to sharing His faith in Jesus Christ. Whether he was well and things were going great OR he was incredibly sick and in pain, he praised the Lord for it all. He had joy when most people would throw their fists in the air and curse God. His life was too short. But he used his time incredibly well.

I want to live life on mission just like him.

Colossians 3:23 speaks of doing everything we do as if we are doing it for the Lord. You might have a job. But you don’t work for your boss. You were made to work for the Lord- whether you believe that to be true or not, you were made to work for Him. So whether you are a child of God, a mom, a dad, a teacher, a lawyer, a barista, a janitor, a bus driver, an NFL quarterback, a retiree, unemployed, a police officer, a fire fighter, a doctor, WHATEVER YOU DO- God has made you to reflect His righteousness, His goodness, His truth, His love and all of His character to those you interact with in your sphere of influence.

So how do we do it? How do we make the most of our time? Well, I would like to suggest that it can’t happen by accident. It happens when we are doing life deliberately: prayerfully, passionately, and purposefully. That means we have to think through things. We have to reflect and make some choices to change in areas where we are dissatisfied. It means praying and asking God to convict us both our areas of success and failure. It means submitting ourselves to Him in areas where we are failing. 1 Peter 5:5 says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” This means that if we submit and humble ourselves to Him, He will give us the grace we need in all circumstances. But when we refuse to bow to Him and admit our need for Him, we will most certainly find ourselves at battle with Him. He is always guaranteed to win.

During our time of prayer and reflection, it may be wise to do some journaling. Write out our roles: are you a child of God?, are you married?, a parent?, an employee?, a son/daughter?, a friend?, etc. List them and write down your responsibilities in those areas. Make a goal in each area. Then, go through your list of roles and give each a number, signifying importance (#1 being the most important).

Finally, use a planner or a piece of notebook paper to create a weekly or monthly schedule and appoint time to tend to each of your roles and goals. Give first priority to your most important role, then your second, and so on…. If your “plate” is overly full, you may find that you run out of time to do everything. That’s ok! You may need to say NO to some things. And saying NO to some things means you can say YES to more important things- thereby honoring the Lord by doing what you do heartily, unto Him.

So what do you say? Are you doing everything you do heartily, as unto the Lord? Are you making the most of the very short time here on Earth? I know I could stand to re-evaluate and shore up some areas! I’d love to hear your thoughts, so PLEASE, share your comments below!!

Keep Doing Life Deliberately,

Trisha

P.S. If you are a homeschool parent (or know someone who is!), watch and share my latest YouTube video on How To Prevent and Correct Homeschool Burnout. I hope you find it to be a blessing.❤️

Time Saving Ideas for Homeschool

With each additional child, the time spent homeschooling every day increases exponentially for mom and/or dad. Homeschool begins with teaching kids at home, but that is not where homeschool ends. Not only do parents spend time teaching the kids, but they have to plan out their schoolwork and correct their finished schoolwork, just like a vocational teacher. If you are the minority homeschooling parent that has nothing else to do besides teach the kids (I don’t know anyone personally who is in this position), then spending the entire day planning, teaching and correcting is no problem. BUT, if you are like most people and have a house to keep, possibly a part time or full time job, and activities to run kids to, then like myself, you can probably benefit from some…

Time Saving Tips

• Choose curriculum that will do some or all of the planning for you. There are many curriculums out there to choose from. I absolutely love that My Father’s World (our curriculum of choice for the past 4 years) does some of the planning for me. The teacher’s guide breaks lesson plans up by weeks and mom and dad can easily plug in the subjects that are age/level specific, such as math, foreign language, etc.
• Study some of your subjects together. When you do unit studies, the family learns together rather than having to go from child to child to their individual, age specific curriculum. You all interact with the same material (though older students will likely have more challenging reading), so it’s easier to stay on top of checking and correcting their work.
• Use curriculums that will check the work for you! Oh man, I LOVE Teaching Textbooks for this reason. Teaching Textbooks is a computer based math curriculum that not only makes math fun for your kids and teens, but it also checks their work and keeps records of their progress!! What a blessing!! We also love Rosetta Stone (a software based language curriculum) for the same reason.
• If you find that checking and correcting your student’s work is bogging you down, see if you can’t talk your spouse into sharing the load. Divide and conquer!! Having both mom and dad involved in holding kids accountable this way provides regular opportunities for both parents to have meaningful interactions with the kids and be aware of what the kids are learning, struggling with, and excelling at.
• Share the load of tutoring difficult subjects with your kids. If you have a child who is really struggling, have the parent who is stronger in that subject tutor them. Or, if it is an area of difficulty for both mom and dad, seek out a college student to tutor privately, or find a local tutoring center to supplement what they are already doing.
• If your find yourself struggling to assemble supplies and teach multiple science labs, team up with another family or a local homeschool co-op to do science labs together. Parents can divide kids by age group and teach them at the same time OR take turns compiling materials OR divide what materials to bring. Doing labs with friends can make the whole experience more enjoyable no matter how you divide and conquer the material.
• Have siblings test and correct one another. An example of how this plays out in our home is spelling. The kids enjoy giving each other their protests and test for spelling. And with the spelling workbook in front of them, it is no problem to check if the words were spelled correctly or not. Just this little step can save mom and dad time over and over again.

There are dozens of ways to save time in homeschool. What are your best tips for saving time in homeschool?? We’d love to hear your best tips and tricks, so please, leave them in the comment section below.

Until next time, keep Doing Life Deliberately!!

~Trisha

*disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I will receive a small commission. This is one way you can help support our family. If you have any questions about what this means or how this works, let me know! I’d love to answer your questions. 🙂

The Benefits of Long Term Lesson Planning

If you watched my YouTube video on How To Lesson Plan for Homeschool , you know that I opt to plan many weeks at a time. We have four kids, so lesson planning takes a significant amount of time. I, for one, would rather shove thorns under all my fingernails than have to lesson plan every week, because of the time consuming process that it is. Therefore, I plan 6-8 weeks at a time.

“Why is it such a chore,” you ask? With having four kids, there is a ton of books to reference in order to complete their assignment sheets. I am most productive with lesson planning if I am removed from the kids, which generally means hanging out at Starbucks to lesson plan. Can you imagine hauling 30 textbooks (because they are all in different grades) to Starbucks every single week? Uh, no. Once every 6-8 weeks will do nicely, thank you.

That being said, I would like to share with you some other benefits to creating long term lesson plans. Homeschooling has made me a planner, because if I did not plan ahead, I would constantly be scrambling from one child to another, one household chore to another, one meal to another. In summary, I would be a basket case. Ok, I’d be more of a basket case than I already am. (Just keeping it real, folks.)

Benefits:

• It really only takes an hour or two more to plan for multiple weeks than it does for one week. You already have the books out, ready to go- so why not?
• Planning 6-8 weeks at a time allows for life to happen: illness, accidents, late nights, busy schedules, etc. It’s easy to change the date at the top of the page if you need to put things off a day or two. Having things planned ahead is one less stress when life throws you a curve ball.
• Lesson planning can be a time consuming venture, largely depending on how you approach homeschooling (unschooling vs. hyper scheduled). But planning in large chunks allows time daily for other time consuming responsibilities, like correcting completed school work, making meals, taking kids to activities, etc.
• Long term planning reduces stress, eliminating that awful feeling that one is always behind.
• Having daily planning off your plate means that you are able to focus on others more: your family, your friends, your neighbors. Preplanning creates margin and freedom to be attentive to the needs of others (for example, now you can bring a meal to a sick friend or play that board game your daughter has been wanting you to play).

How about you? How do you approach lesson planning? Do you have any tips and tricks that could help others? Share your comments and questions below- I look forward to learning from you and responding!

Keep doing life deliberately!

Trisha

Creating Margin in Your Family

Our culture is so ridiculously busy. We have gone from an attitude of “Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop” to lives that are too busy to be concerned with anyone else but me. The tendency toward a packed schedule has been my life story. Even as a child, I was a extremely active: afterschool jobs, sports, music lessons, speech, drama, band, 4H, and church activities. There was rarely a day that I did not have an event to go to. And though I was busy and managed to stay out of trouble, looking back I can see that there was not a ton of quality family time. I was pretty consumed by me: what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go. I think that my crazy pace (though it was filled with many, many “good” things), enabled me to become very self-centered.

I am not advocating dropping all extracurriculars, afterschool jobs, and the like. We don’t want to be creating a generation of lazy bums. But I wonder if there is a happy medium to be had: a schedule that allows for kids explore their interests, but not at the cost of quality and quantity family time. Is there a sweet spot that allows our children to be active, but also creates space in their lives to appreciate rest and give of their time to others?

I think one of the serious dangers of not creating margin in our families is that we are not only being selfish with our own time, but we are also leading (by example) our children to be selfish with their time. Time is precious. Time is fleeting. And when we fill our schedules so full of activities that we have no flexibility to meet the needs of others, we have severely limited how God can use us to be a blessing in the lives of others. We have no space/availability to be about our Father’s business.

I think there are a few questions we can ask ourselves to evaluate whether or not we have entered the camp of “too busy, no margin”;

• Do we have a day where we rest together as a family, with no commitments (a day of Sabbath)?

• Do we regularly (not every day, but frequently) sit down at the dinner table and eat together as a family?

• Are we spending more than an hour a day in the car driving to school or extracurricular activities?

• Do we have evenings available in a week where we can show hospitality to others, either by opening our home or meeting people elsewhere for fellowship?

• Do we have enough time in our day to bring a meal to someone in need, pray as a family for someone who is hurting, help someone move, or another random act of kindness?

I am absolutely convinced that when our kids are adults, they will not remember the gifts they received, or the trophies, medals and ribbons they earned. Those things will all collect dust somewhere and fade from memory. But the things they will treasure, that will stay with them forever, are the experiences they had with their family and friends. I want to make space for my children (who like me are sinful and selfish by nature) to learn to open their eyes to observe the needs of those around them, to use their minds and hearts to consider how they can meet those needs, and to use their time and abilities to meet those needs. But if I let my kids’ schedules get too full with no margin, there will literally be no space for our kids to learn that selflessness and practice sacrificial love. I can’t make my kids selfless, but I can create an environment in our daily lives that creates space for those opportunities to learn and practice selflessness, kindness, and rest.

If you want to see more about how I schedule our homeschool days, click on the link: How I Schedule Our Homeschool

What challenges does your family face in creating space for margin and rest in your home? Do you have any insights or tools that you can share with other Doing Life Deliberately readers so that they can have success in this area? PLEASE, share your thoughts below!! We’d love to hear from you!!

Until next time, keep Doing Life Deliberately!

~Trisha

Our Homeschool Schedule for 2017-2018

One of the things I found myself wondering early on in homeschooling, was how did other families schedule their time?  So today, I am sharing with you how we schedule our time (no need to wonder anymore)!  😉

7:30- Family Bible time

8am- PE

8:45- Xtra math (Hannah and Sarah), math assignment (Gideon and Izzy)

9am- Everyone works on math assignment

9:30- Math assignment (Hannah and Sarah), Xtra Math (Gideon and Izzy)

10am- Science (Botany- Gideon and Izzy), General Science (Sarah), Biology (Hannah)

10:30- History, vocabulary and read aloud

11:30- Writing (Gideon and Sarah), Writing and Grammar with Mom (Izzy)

12pm- Lunch

Our afternoons consist of piano practice, Spanish on the computer, quiet reading, and finishing up any remaining school work and chores.  We held pretty tightly to this schedule for the first few weeks of school.  But it didn’t take long for Gideon to figure out that if he worked ahead, he could have more free time during the day.  He is generally up around 6am and gets to work on his assignments around 6:30 or 7am most days. (What can I say? He’s an easy student!)

Our schedule always changes a bit from year to year as I evaluate what worked well the previous year, and what needs tweaking.  But this seems to work well for us now.  We start the day off by giving the first part of our day to the Lord.  It seems to work well to have PE next because we burn a little energy and then we can focus on the harder subjects of the day: math and science.  This worked a little more neatly at the beginning of the year when I held everyone to the schedule, but now it’s a lot more flex.

If you want to see what a day in the life of our homeschool looks like, view our YouTube video by clicking on this link: A Day in the Life of Our Homeschool

So how about you?  If you are currently homeschooling, how do you schedule your time?  I would love to hear what works well for you!!

Keep Doing Life Deliberately,

Trisha